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Tuberville raise rankles Tech faculty

A recent pay boost for Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville has miffed some professors whose own pay has stagnated against a spartan state funding backdrop.

Tuberville

Guy Bailey

A recent pay boost for Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville has miffed some professors whose own pay has stagnated against a spartan state funding backdrop.

Several professors at a faculty senate meeting Wednesday questioned the university’s January announcement it will increase Tuberville’s annual pay by $500,000 through 2015, one of the university’s few raises as it braces for lawmakers to cut tens of millionsof dollars from the university’s revenue.

The five-year $11 million contract guarantees Tuberville at least $2 million per year, up from $1.5 million in the original contract he signed with Tech in 2010.

Tech president Guy Bailey said Friday the school was fulfilling a promise it made to Tuberville a year ago when it hired him at “less than market value.”

Bailey told Tuberville they would consider tweaking his contract after a season’s worth of season ticket sales, which set records last fall. Also, Bailey said, the raise comes as Tech slowly withdraws acacdemic subsidies to less-lucrative sports, a funding hole he expects Tuberville’s football program to fill.

Still, Bailey said, he understands faculty ire.

“I’m sympathetic,” he said. “I’d love to be giving pay raises right now more generally.”

In 2011, Tuberville’s salary will be the sixth-largest in the Big 12 Conference, up from its No. 10 spot under the original contract.

Richard Meek, president of Tech’s faculty senate, sees both sides of the debate. While he understands how competitive the NCAA coaching market can be, he also relates to his fellow faculty members who have been asked to take a pay freeze in 2011.

Tech nixed $3 million in faculty raises to absorb an 8-percent reduction in state funding already in effect, and the freeze doesn’t show any sign of thaw in early budget drafts out of Austin.

“If that was me, I would have turned it down,” said Julian Spallholz, a faculty senator and human sciences professor. “I would have been embarrassed (to accept the raise).”

Others later said the raise shows a priority on athletics over academics.

Meek, like Bailey, said some frustration may stem from confusion about how Tech pays Tuberville’s salary. Many fail to understand that a funding wall separates academics and athletic budgets, Bailey said, so the raise does not directly siphon from academic coffers. Each year, however, academics does subsidize $2.5 million of the athletic department’s budget. Bailey said Tech has reduced that to $2.25 million this year to reflect state cuts and he hopes to slowly wean athletics off that subsidy entirely over the next few years.

But, he added, his office first needs time to untangle federal and NCAA red tape tied to the subsidy.

Wednesday’s faculty discussion touched on an older, broader debate about where and how sports fit at public universities. The question has surfaced repeatedly over the past few years alongside a surge in athletic spending.

“Regardless of the specifics of the money flow, there’s still a question of the symbolism of what this says about the university’s priorities,” said John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors, a faculty advocacy group in Washington. “If you’re at a time of cutting academic programs or freezing or cutting salaries for faculty and other employees and you have a raise for the football coach — even if the money is there — it sends a completely wrong signal about where the priorities of the university are.”